CHAPTER XV
On the third day of Donald’s convalescence he was able to leave his cabin. With his arm in a sling, his face patched with plaster, he made the rounds of the mill.
The men welcomed him with eager nods and smiles, many coming forward to shake his hand in silent respect. The big plant was now going at full blast. Belts flapped, logs thudded, planers snored loudly, and the great saw ripped shrilly through the big logs in a raising crescendo of sound.
Down at the siding an engine bumped noisily into a long string of flat-cars piled high with lumber. With arms akimbo, his wet undershirt clinging to his powerful torso, the mop of blond hair hanging damp on his brow, Gillis stood surveying the heavily-laden cars with an air of complacency. The lumber handlers sat about in positions of weariness, mopping their hot faces.
Gillis smiled cheerfully as Donald approached.
“Good news for you, Donnie,” he said.
“What is it, Jack?”
“Last load for the big steamer,” replied Gillis, as he pointed at the moving train.
“We’re on time, then,” cried Donald gladly.
“One day ahead,” corrected Gillis.
The engineer came to the cab window as the engine passed, and pantomimed his congratulations by shaking hands with himself. The train gathered speed, and as the caboose rattled by, the conductor came to the rear platform.
“Good work, boys!” he shouted.
They stood watching the train until it struck the down grade and disappeared through the cut.
“Well, that’s over,” observed Gillis, as he sat down heavily and wiped the sweat from his face. He looked tired and worn, but the light of victory shone in his eyes.
“If it hadn’t been for you, Jack,” said Donald earnestly, “we would not have got that order away on time. You look all in; you’d better have a good sleep.”
The big man’s eyes brightened at Donald’s praise.
“You don’t look like you’d bin to a Sunday-school picnic,” replied Gillis with a chuckle.
As Donald walked up the hill the whistle blew for the noon-hour, and the men trooped past on their way to the dining-room. Blackie left the ranks and walked shamefacedly to Donald’s side.
“I’m sorry for the part I took in the strike, boss, I——”
“It’s all right, Blackie,” interrupted Donald, “you more than made up for it. We’ll forget all about that.”
Blackie’s face wore a relieved look as Donald gave his hand a friendly grip.
Meals in logging camps are eaten in silence and with a fixity of purpose. It is a business to be finished with as hurriedly as possible. From the time the men are seated until the chairs are pushed back, the clatter of dishes and an occasional “pass the butter” are the only sounds.
As Donald moved to his place at the table the men arose and clapped their hands. Someone called for a cheer, but Donald laughingly held up his hand.
“Men, I can’t find words to tell you how much I appreciate your good work. Your long hours of labour enabled the Company to get an important order away on time, thereby saving their prestige in a big Eastern market. You will receive double pay for every hour you worked during the week.”
A low murmur of applause followed this welcome announcement.
After lunch, feeling the need of exercise, Donald made his way slowly down the hill. The severe mauling and the days in bed had weakened him to such an extent that he was forced to take frequent rests. As he turned a curve in the trail, Hand and the man with whom Andy had fought crawled stealthily from the bush, looked furtively about them, then followed Donald down the hill. He reached the open glade by the fairy nest to find Connie seated by the rippling stream, her chin resting in cupped hands, and staring dreamily into the flashing water.
“Ah!” he cried gaily, “I have caught my little dryad at her orisons.”
At the sound of his voice Connie sprang to her feet, her heart racing madly. Hearing a sound behind him, Donald turned to find the eyes of the Breed fixed on him in a malignant glare that chilled him to the marrow. For a short interval the dusky orbs of the Indian held his as though with a hypnotic power.
“Whew!” he ejaculated, as the Breed hobbled down the trail, “your guardian sure does give me an awful look. Why does he hate me, Connie?”
“Joe has peculiar ways,” she parried.
“What were you dreaming about, Connie?” he asked interestedly.
A gay light danced momentarily in her shining eyes, and the red lips curved in a smile; “I was dreaming I was rich,” she archly confessed.
“An old, old dream,” smiled Donald as he stretched himself painfully on the moss.
Connie sat down near him.
As always, this spot gave Donald a restful feeling. The gentle zephyrs wafted from the woods about them were somnolently delicious and the sparkling glacial stream that rippled through the glade sang its clear, sweet song. He closed his eyes wearily.
The proximity of the man she loved, lying there with his arm in a splint, his handsome face still bearing the marks of the blows he had suffered in her defence, thrilled Connie to the depths of her warm, impulsive heart. An almost overmastering desire to touch his hair possessed her.
“What would you do if you were rich, Connie?” he queried drowsily.
Connie sank back in the delicious moss and clasped her hands behind her golden head. “I’d buy a big trunk—one of that kind with the bulgy top—and I’d fill it with silks, satins, brocades, velvets and all kinds of soft frilly things. Then I’d unpack it slowly one by one and hang them up all around the room and sit down and look at them. I’d buy a great, big stone house in London, and I’d walk down the wide marble stairs, trailing a long rustling silk gown, and I’d raise my lorgnette to my eyes and say, ‘James, have the carriage at the door in half-an-hour.’ I’d have a country place in Scotland, with hundreds of dogs and horses, thousands of birds, and acres of flowers.”
She paused for a moment.
“I’d take Dad and Peggy with me everywhere I’d go,” she went on softly, “and I’d buy Dad millions of books, and for Peggy I’d buy a solid gold-mounted bridle, and lots of warm blankets for winter instead of those old sacks. I’d buy lots of good things to eat, and lots of good clothes for all the poor kiddies in the world.”
She looked up at the hills. “And six months out of every year,” she continued, “I’d live right here in these mountains and come every day and sit beside—beside—this stream.”
She raised herself slowly and looked down at Donald as he lay with closed eyes. Leaning forward until her golden curls almost brushed his dark hair, her eyes rested on a purple bruise on his brow. “And,” she finished fiercely, “I’d kill every man like Ole Hand.”
Donald laughed sleepily.
“Connie, you are a dear little girl,” he said tenderly.
The endearing tone held a paternal ring, and Connie bit her lip in vexation.
“I’d like to have you and your father go with me to Vancouver some day. Will you go?”
For a moment Connie was silent. “When—when my dreams come true,” she responded with an embarrassed smile.
Then he told her of the city and its ways and the things people did. She listened, not with amazement, but with a contented smile, as though what he told her was a confirmation of her dreams. But when he told her of the grand opera, the music, the costumes and the singing, her grey eyes wide with longing, she sighed deeply.
Donald’s voice trailed to a drowsy close; his chest rose and fell regularly, his features relaxed. He felt as though he were floating, exquisitely floating, on a sea of fleecy clouds that was bearing him softly away. A delicious langour enthralled him—an enchantment drowsy and dim. He felt himself drifting, drifting . . . He was asleep.
The willows at the lower end of the meadow were pushed cautiously aside, and Hand’s head appeared in the opening. For two days he had lain hidden awaiting an opportunity to waylay Donald. The day after the fight he had boarded the train for the Coast, but had slipped from the car at the station below.
His face—unprepossessing at its best—was now a horrible sight. The thick lips were swollen and cracked, the eyes discoloured and puffed, and the broken teeth bared in a snarl as he saw Donald lying by the stream. Every hour since the fight Hand’s hatred for Donald had grown blacker. He would show him that he, Ole Hand, deserved his reputation as a fighter. He would hold this crippled man helpless while he showered blows on his unprotected face, make him cry out for mercy on bended knees; perhaps kill him. His hatred grew hotter and deeper as he watched him lying peacefully beside the girl who had been the cause of the fight in which he had been ignominiously whipped.
Connie sat gazing intently down on the sleeper. A sudden thought seized her, bringing a warm flush to her cheeks. Why not? No one would ever know. Would she dare? She glanced timorously about her, then leaned slowly over, her curls falling about her face, and touched her soft lips to Donald’s cheek.
A bluejay screamed derisively. Connie came to her feet, her face crimson. Donald stirred, opened his eyes, and painfully raised himself.
“I’m sorry, Connie,” he apologized, “it was very rude of me to go to sleep.”
A moment later he walked down the hill. Connie accompanied him a short distance, then turned up a steep path, and from a high, rocky ridge she watched his retreating figure as he turned toward the dam.
A huge bucket on a cable, that had been used during construction for carrying men and material across the roaring chasm below the falls, still hung above the boiling waters.
For Donald there was a certain thrill, a keen exhilaration, in swinging in mid-air in this crude conveyance. He stepped into the bucket and with his one good arm pulled it along the rusty cable.
The Breed, hidden near the trail, saw Donald as he walked toward the dam. The venomous look in his eyes gave place to one of strained interest as he saw the two men skulking menacingly after the unsuspecting man. With a feeling of malignant exultation, as he sensed disaster to the man he hated, he hobbled to the trail and furtively followed.
From the heights above Connie saw the sneaking figures as they crouched low against the edge of the dark spruces and at once divined their murderous object. For an instant she was paralyzed with terror. Her lips refused to move and her limbs grew numb.
The men moved cautiously as they approached their intended victim, fearing that he might be armed. As Hand saw Donald suspended over the river a look of fiendish elation crossed his features. Here was a chance to dispose of his enemy with no trace of the crime. He tore a fire-axe from the wall of the tool-house and ran to the swaying cable.
The Breed heard Connie’s piercing scream of terror above the sound of crashing waters. He glanced up to see her silhouetted against the blue sky, her arms waving frantically.
“Joe! Joe! Stop them! Stop them!”
Screaming again, she plunged straight down the hillside in a mad race to reach the scene of action. Running like a deer, stumbling and falling, her breath coming in short gasps, she ran wildly on. Snarls of the thorny crab-apple tore at her, devil’s-club lacerated her face and hands, but she felt no pain. “O God,” she prayed aloud, “help me save him! Help me save him!”
Donald’s face blanched at the sound of the axe as it bit into the heavy wire cable. He looked down at the jagged rocks and seething waters below. Then with closed eyes and a prayer on his lips he tore in mad frenzy at the rope. Desperately he tugged with both hands, although the pain from his broken wrist sent a wave of torment up his arm that sickened him.
No man can measure the speed of thought in a crisis; even the sluggish brain of the Breed functioned rapidly. Connie was not for him. Her happiness was bound up in the man working feverishly at the haul-back. There was not one chance in a million that he would gain the safety of the cliff before the strands parted to plunge him to eternity. As he heard the crashing of Connie’s slender body as she tore down the hill, a softness crept into his eyes. With a speed incredible in one with his pitiful deformity, he ran in a series of bounding steps to the edge of the bluff. The noise of tumbling waters drowned the sound of his approach. Just as Hand raised his axe for the final blow, the muscular arms of the Breed were flung about him. Emitting a startled curse, the big man turned and with a twist of his powerful shoulders flung his dusky assailant to the ground. As he rose Hand swung viciously at him with the axe.
With a quick movement the Breed dodged, and the weapon flashed over his head, flew from the big man’s hands, and struck his confederate, a glancing blow on the shoulder that brought from him a howl of pain. Again the Breed’s arms closed about his adversary’s waist. Mad with the pain in his shoulder, the foreigner drew a long, keen knife, circled warily about the two wrestling men until he found an opening, then plunged the knife to the hilt in the Breed’s left side. The stricken man slithered from his opponent’s arms and fell a crumpled heap to the ground.
Sick and giddy, Donald stumbled from the bucket, seized the axe and advanced weakly toward Hand. Hand’s accomplice, taking one look at the prostrate body, turned and fled terror-stricken to the woods. Hand hesitated for a moment, then followed heavily after.
At this moment, Connie, with clothes torn and hair dishevelled, broke from the woods, and with a cry of pity flung herself to the ground by the Breed’s side and placed his head on her lap. The eyes of the wounded man flickered slowly open. He tried to speak, but a strong convulsion shook his frame from head to foot and he writhed in desperate agony.
Connie’s face as she lifted it to Donald was drawn with grief. “Get me some water, please,” she said brokenly.
The dying man’s lips moved. Connie leaned closer.
“I—I—love you,” he whispered faintly, “I—saved him—for you.”
A ghastly pallor spread over his features and his lips were widely parted in a struggle for breath. Again his lips moved in a fluttering whisper. “Connie—will—you—kiss me?”
As Connie pressed her tear-wet face to his the pain-contorted features relaxed in a smile of wonderful peace and his eyes closed.
When Donald returned Connie’s head was bowed and she was weeping softly.
“How is he, Connie?” he questioned gently.
“He’s dead.”
Donald removed his hat and knelt with bowed head.
“He died for me,” he choked.
“And for me,” she whispered inaudibly.